Mary Cheney's Pregnancy Affects Us All

Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.

Mary Cheney is among that burgeoning group of adult women over age 20 that are driving the trend of women who don’t want a man in the picture, but want to have a baby. These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).

Well-educated, professional Mary Cheney is flying in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the top experts who agree that the very best family structure for a child’s well-being is a married mom and dad family. Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers.

One Georgia high school principal reported, “We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don’t have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They’ve seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves.”

When fatherless children get to be teens, the girls tend to start looking for love in all the wrong places and the boys tend to find as their role model the bad-boy celebrities of MTV, NFL and NBA.

As they grow older, fatherless children tend to have trouble dealing with male authority figures. Too often children in single-mother households end up angry at their absent fathers and resentful of the mother who has had to be a father figure, too. Typically, the boys who have a love-hate relationship with their mother end up hating all women. Numerous of them look for vulnerable women where they can act out their anger and be in control.

Mary Cheney’s action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational –– children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life. Experts from both the left and the right cite a disastrous litany of negative outcomes that are predictable when a child grows up in a fatherless family. Such children tend to get involved in drugs, alcohol abuse, and delinquency; they tend to drop out of school and have teen pregnancies. An assistant principal in a Junior High School said that many of the behavioral problems that teachers face in the classroom stem from households without a father’s influence.

Mary’s pregnancy is an “in-your-face” action countering the Bush Administration’s pro-family, pro-marriage and pro-life policies. She continues to repudiate the work to which her father has devoted his life. Mary has repeatedly said that “studies” show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.

All those people who talk about doing what is best “for our children” need to get back to the basics: children need a married mom and dad. Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a culturally conservative think tank for Concerned Women for America, is a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.

John, long time, no see...

My neighbor happens to be a lesbian single mother. Not a situation that either I or my wife approve of. But (here's the but) the woman is a darn good kid and the boy she's adopted is just that, a real boy out in the yard with a toy backhoe digging and building, playing soccer with the other kids and he seems to be a happy kid.

There's no clamor coming from over there, there are no police interventions for abuse or loud parties, etc. You'd never even guess that the woman is a lesbian unless you took the time to investigate. My wife and I think that at least this adopted child has a quiet, stable, happy home with a woman who wants him and cares for him and doesn't have to grow up in an orphanage.

Of course the kid, any kid for that matter, is better off with a mom and dad and it breaks my heart to see this situation being "mainstreamed". In the meantime and in our less than perfect world, I'm glad some one is raising this lad with love and affection.

John, Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Again, if you will, at no point will you be able to find arguments from the Framers for 'moral concerns' to be defined by law at the federal level. It just was not a consideration as they recognized it to be a right of the states. I realize this may destroy your world view and that of many other 'true conservatives' but it was just not intended.

George Washington

"Father of Our Country"

While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.

(Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XXX, p. 432 n., from his address to the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in North America, October 9, 1789.)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of man and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice?

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

(Source: George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States . . . Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge), pp. 22-23. In his Farewell Address to the United States in 1796.)

[T]he [federal] government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, and oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.

(Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1939), Vol. XXIX, p. 410. In a letter to Marquis De Lafayette, February 7, 1788.)

_______________________________

James McHenry

Signer of the Constitution

[P]ublic utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

(Source: Bernard C. Steiner, One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland, 1810-1920 (Maryland Bible Society, 1921), p. 14.)

_______________________________

Fisher Ames

Framer of the First Amendment

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

(Source: Fisher Ames, An Oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington (Boston: Young & Minns, 1800), p. 23.)

______________________________

John Adams Signer of the Declaration of Independence and Second President of the United States

[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854), Vol. IX, p. 401, to Zabdiel Adams on June 21, 1776.)

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. VI, p. 9.)

Importance of Morality and Religion in Government

I have heard this argument many, many times, and I don't buy it. Everything I have ever heard about how young men develop states that they do better if they have a father. The fact that your neighbor "seems" to be doing a good job tells me nothing. It won't be clear how this choice will affect the boy for many years.

Mary Cheney's Pregnancy affects us all because it validates the gay lifestyle and indicates that fathers are irrelevant. If it's okay to have this baby, it's okay to have this kid play with your kid and go to school with your child. If you have parents who are lesbians or homosexual dads, how can you keep a book like Heather Has Two Mommies out of the school library. If gay parents are part of the school system, how can you not teach that the gay lifestlye is good and healthy. One thing slides so easily from the other.

Can this affect your child? Absolutely! I live in a very conservative area. I've already heard about a lesbian high school coach who brought her players into her spats with her lover, and the girls on the team had to pretend to be gay to be in with the coach. Many of the high school kids are experimenting with bisexuality.

I used to feel much more tolerant about the gay lifestlye, but over the years all I've seen are people who are very narcissistic and hopelessly self-centered. It's all about their rights, their needs, and their wants. And every one is supposed to rearrange society to make them happy or be considered a bigot. We never, never discuss the lifestyle. As I have observed it, I have come to believe that the gay lifestyle is a totally unhealthy lifestyle. If you promote it, you're twisting reality and hurting people to obtain selfish ends. Being selfish is not good; it's just being selfish.

Look, I have no quarrel with anything you've said. We're in agreement.

These people have always been with us. We had fag teachers and queer coaches 1/2 a century ago when I was in HS and they were surreptitiously recruiting even then.

They've been allowed to set the debate parameters and co-opted the language, moving from "tolerance" to "acceptance" because liberals are 1.) cowards and 2.) will give BJs for votes.

I merely stated what I have observed in both my neighbors and kid's behavior.

Your last paragraph:

I used to feel much more tolerant about the gay lifestlye, but over the years all I've seen are people who are very narcissistic and hopelessly self-centered. It's all about their rights, their needs, and their wants. And every one is supposed to rearrange society to make them happy or be considered a bigot. We never, never discuss the lifestyle. As I have observed it, I have come to believe that the gay lifestyle is a totally unhealthy lifestyle. If you promote it, you're twisting reality and hurting people to obtain selfish ends. Being selfish is not good; it's just being selfish.

That not only describes the gay lifestyle, but the liberal, psuedo-intellectual left in general and an increasing number of parents in this country.

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